Subject name: Language and Society
Professor name: Prof. Rajesh Kumar
Department: Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Institute name: IIT Madras
Lecture number: Module -10
Lecture title: Sentence
Today, we will look at role of understanding sentences in understanding relationship between
language and society. We have two parts in this course. First part is language and other part is
society. In the study of language and in particular, the study of structure of language at level of
sentence, the unit of investigation is a sentence. However, in the study of language, in the context
of society, the unit of investigation happens to be discourse.
We have looked at it earlier. and little later we will look at it in details as well that a discourse is
not a random collection of sentences. A discourse has got several other things in built in it, to be
qualified to be called a discourse. Similarly, a sentence is not merely collection of words. It is
much more than that. and therefore, we would like to very briefly look at the structure of a
sentence. And what involves in understanding of a sentence for us to understand the relationship
between language and society. Better such a thing will help us appreciate this relationship at a
deeper level. Let us understand, what goes in making of a sentence?
(Refer Slide Time: 2:04)
We know that human mind takes input and gives grammatical, infinite, rule governed, systematic
output. What makes this output grammatical, infinite, rule governed and systematic is visible at
the level of words, sounds. But also at the level of sentences
(Refer Slide Time: 2:28)
Today we will be looking at what we mean by grammatical, infinite and rule governed at the
level of a sentence. So we will try to address few questions like: What is a sentence? How are
sentences made? How does understanding the structure of sentences help us to understand the
underlying patterns of language and role of human mind? We will also look at some constraints
on the formation of a Sentence.
(Refer Slide Time: 3:02)
Let us first look at the components of a sentence. And i invite you to look at the chapters and
other videos on language and mind to appreciate the structure of a sentence at larger and more
detailed level. We will very briefly go through these things for the purpose of this course. There
are two parts of a sentence one is subject and the other is called the predicate. the two parts
subject and predicate also requires us to understand these terms in little bit more details.
The definition of subject happens to be a difficult one. However there are two ways of looking at
the definition of a subject. One is the grammatical perspective and the other is semantic
perspective. Grammatical perspective, subject of a sentence is the element, usually a noun phrase
that agrees with the verb in the predicate. And this agreeing is an important part which we come
to, in a minute. Everything other than the subject in a sentence is part of predicate that is verb
and everything other than the subject, objects are part of the predicate as they are defined and
decided by the nature of the verb.
To appreciate this thing, we need to look at the components of a sentence at a different level as
well. The parts of the sentence could be put in different categories, one is Lexical category and
the other is Functional category. Things like nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, etc., are
going to be part of Lexical category. However elements like number, person, gender, tense
aspect, agreement where number, person and gender are part of agreement are called functional
category. We will be looking at example of a Sentence to understand this in a better way.
(Refer Slide time: 5:37)
So we have two things, subject and predicate. And then we have grammatical relations. Then we
have nouns and verbs. So what we call a subject and what we call a predicate and within the
predicate we have verbs and objects. These are grammatical relations and noun does not
automatically become a subject and noun becomes a subject in the context of a sentence.
Similarly, a noun becomes the object of a verb. And therefore, because it belongs to a verb these
are called grammatical relations. And then nouns and verbs are lexical units .
(Refer Slide time: 6:14)
Let us take an example of a Sentence. “John loves Mary”. The „John‟ is the subject; „loves Mary‟
is the predicate in which „loves‟ and to be more precise, „love‟ is the verb and „Mary‟ is the
object. “John wrote a letter to Mary.” „John‟ is the Subject „wrote a letter to Mary‟ is the
Predicate in which, „wrote‟ is a Verb, „a letter‟ is a direct object and „to Mary‟ is an indirect
object. Both „a letter to Mary‟ is objects, a part of the verb, part of the predicate and decided by
the verb, nature of the verb „write‟.
So we will look at more examples and then we will see what it means to be a sentence. In
generative Grammar, all grammatical sentence and only grammatical sentences are called
sentences.
(Refer Slide time: 7:16)
So, the good thing about the generative approach of looking at sentences from infinite set of
rules, we get from a finite set of rules, we get infinite number of well-formed sentences. And the
productivity of languages becomes clearer by looking at principles and parameters that govern
language.
(Refer Slide time: 7:43)
So we take you to the sentences again the sentences that we have seen. And then we will focus
on the simpler part. So when we say, “John loves Mary”, we have looked at the grammatical
components and grammatical relations in terms of subjects and objects. We have been known
that this is a sentence, it has two parts. “John” subject and “loves Mary” as a predicate. So what
we want here to understand that the marker „sir‟ on the verb „love‟ which makes the verb „loves‟
is the marker of an Agreement.
And in this sentence, this marks third person and singular number which are also apparently the
features on the subject „n p‟ which is third person and singular number. So these two features
must match. That is the features on the subject „n p‟ must match with the features of the verb or
must come, must be allowed to be present on the verb. In order for a sentence to be grammatical
and that is ill grammatical sentence. So Words will not usually agree with objects and they agree
with the subject if there is nothing intervening between them.
And verbs determine whether or not it requires an object. For example, there are two types of
verbs. At least one is intransitive verbs and other is Transitive verb. This categorization is
looking at the nature of the verb. So there are two things that are related to the nature of the
verbs, one is Transitivity and other is Intransitivity. Intransitive nature of verb would not allow
the verb to take an Object. However, the transitive nature of the verb does exactly the opposite.
Transitive verb will have an object, Intransitive verb will not allow an object. So in this case, we
have an object „Mary‟ and that justifies that is Verb „love‟ is a Transitive verb. Therefore, it
allows an object. So, the relationship between the verb and the object is very local. That is within
predicate and relationship between subject and the verb is cross the predicate. So the two
components of the sentence, subject and predicate must agree in terms of the available features
on the verb. These features are parametric in languages.
For example in English, as you have seen in this example, „John loves Mary‟ we have number
and person participating in agreement. However in a language like Hindi, number along with
number, person and number, gender also participates in the agreement. And therefore a language
like Hindi is called language with grammatical Gender.
(Refer Slide time: 11:08)
When we say sentence in Hindi „Raju ne caay pii‟ we see „Raju‟ has got masculine gender on it.
Apart from his being singular and third person, what we see in this sentence, is the verb „pii na‟
which is in this case, is in perfective aspect appears with the feminine marker.
And then what we find here is the noun „Raju‟ which appears to be the Subject of the sentence
does not agree with the verb „pii na‟ remember in English only person and number participates in
an agreement. In a language like Hindi, number, person and gender, all of them would play a role
in agreement feature in making a sentence grammatical. Therefore what follows from that what
we see in the sentence in the screen „Raju ne caay pii‟ is „Raju‟ what appears to be the Subject
that does not agree with the verb „pee na. And that is because of the intervening of post position
name which is also an Ergative case marker.
So, subject in natural languages would agree with a verb or predicate. Only if there is nothing
intervening between the subject and the predicate. Here the subject has ha overt case marker on it
which intervenes the agreement. Therefore it would not allow the subject to agree with the verb.
Now agreement is an important part in natural language and particularly in Hindi the Sentence
must show Agreement. So what actually ends up happening in the Sentence is the for the purpose
of Agreement. The Sentence looks for a next available Noun which is available for the discharge
of Agreement.
And then the next available noun „chaai‟ which happens to be feminine gender mark which has
feminine gender on it agrees with the verb „pii na‟ and the verb does not agree with „Raju‟. So in
this case, this is an example of grammatical; the agreement which takes care of grammar and
here the „n p Raju‟ is not a grammatical subject of a sentence. For the purpose of grammatical
subject, „caay‟ becomes the grammatical subject of the sentence. However „Raju‟ remains the
semantic object „Raju‟ remains the semantic subject of the verb of the sentence.
Same thing happens in the next sentence. „Siimaa ne seb khaaye‟ you can say „Siimaa‟ which
carries feminine gender along with singular number and third person does not agree with the
verb „eat‟. And that is because; we see a masculine marker on the verb. What we also see plural
marker of the verb. And subject „Siimaa‟ happens to be reflecting a singular number. So
therefore there is no way this semantic subject would agree with the verb in to take care of the
grammatical, to take care of the grammaticality of the subject for this purpose as well. What
happens instead is, it looks for the next noun and the noun „seb‟ which has masculine gender on
it and plural marker on it agrees with the Verb.
Therefore the noun „seb‟ happens to be the grammatical subject. „Siimaa‟ happens to be the
Semantic subject. This also helps us see the split between two types of Subject. So most of the
time in natural languages, we are going to have grammatical subject and a semantic subject.
Most of the time, it so happens that the grammatical subject and semantic subject at least in the
language like Hindi happens to be the same „n p‟ and in this case, when all at any point of where
the „n p‟ is supposed to be agreeing with the verb carries any other marker in this case, Ergative
marker, then they will not be allowed to participate in agreement.
This is an important feature in the in the making of a sentence. And the features like person,
number and gender are relevant. languages vary from one another in terms of what is allowed to
participate in agreement. Some languages would only allow person and number and not gender.
For example, English, some language will allow all person, number and gender to participate in
the agreement pattern. For example, Hindi, what is interesting to note as a foot note here is, there
is, there happens to be a hierarchy in these agreement markers.
For example, if a language, so see the hierarchy is the following. We have agreement; it is taken
care of by three things, they are person, number and gender. What in short, they are also called „p
n g‟ features what I have observed while working on the syntax of Hindi at least. And I want to
share it with you to understand this with clarity that there appears to be a hierarchy in the three.
So, look at it: these three things are participating in the agreement.
If a language allows gender to participate in the agreement like a language, let us say, language
like Hindi. And we see gender participating in the agreement like, we see in the sentences. Then
what we see that these two features will definitely be participating in the agreement as well
whereas when we see gender, when we see only number and person participating in a language
like English, then we need to check and what we find is gender is not a part of agreement in
English.
The moment we see the number participating in the agreement in English, it is easy to conclude
that person will also participate in agreement in English. It works with, that is, same constraints
in Bangla and there are languages where this is not going to, where none of these features are
available, but it is possible that now none of them are going to participate. It is also possible that
one will only participate; it is also possible that two will participate and it is also possible that all
the three would participate in agreement. That will make agreement parametric.
But what we see as interesting phenomena if gender participates in an agreement, the language
will also allow number and person to participate in the agreement. If only number participates in
agreement, if only number participates in agreement and not in it. It is likely that person will
participate and not gender what happens in English and likewise Bangla happens to be another
interesting thing and then Malayalam happens to be a language where we don‟t see any one of
these features participating in agreement.
This is a very interesting thing about natural language. And this becomes an important part in
making of a Sentence. So these are also called „phi features‟. person, number and gender and for
the purpose of the hierarchy of just what we have discussed we need to put it in this order they
are called „p n g‟ features as well.
(Refer Slide Time: 20:49)
So, we find all these things participating in the formation of a sentence in a very critical way.
What we see and what we need to discuss little bit more is, about the role of Tense and Aspect.
And then we need to know about the conceptual framework of a sentence and that will complete
an understanding about what we mean by a sentence. And what is it that we need to see, we
mentioned a question. So we have answered what is a sentence and how sentences are made?
(Refer Slide Time: 21:52)
We have looked at some of the constraints in formation of the Sentence, that a sentence must
show agreement and if it agrees with one feature then it is, it works in a hierarchical fashion. And
what we mean by understanding underlying patterns of language and role of the human mind in
it is the operation, the computation of these agreement features. And the way human mind reads
this, where gender becomes grammatical. That is gender participates in grammar in the sense that
absence or presence of gender in the language makes the sentence grammatical or
ungrammatical. And the presence of gender is going to separate what we know as grammatical
subject and semantic subject.
Such computation helps us understand the role of human mind in processing of sentences and we
understand the role of human mind in processing of sentences only when we look at these
intricate details. Intricate, inherent and innate roles which we don‟t know, but they operate in our
sub conscious and that answers this question. Very soon we will be looking at other part of the
sentences. Thank you.